I stare at him. Then, at the cabin. Then back at him.
“Can I see inside?” I ask.
Darius nods and walks to the porch. He opens the door and stands aside, letting me go in first. He doesn’t follow. He stays on the porch with his hands at his sides, watching me walk through the door.
One room, as I guessed, but it doesn’t feel small. A large bed takes up one corner, made up with thick blankets and more pillows than any reasonable person needs, which means it’s exactly the right amount. A small kitchen along the back wall, just a counter, a sink, and a camp stove, clean and simple. A bathroom door to the right, standing open to show a tiny shower and a toilet. A wood stove in the corner.
But that’s not what stops me.
On the windowsill, arranged in a neat row, are rocks. Different shapes and sizes, some rough, some smooth, some with stripes and veins of colour running through them. They’re not the ones I collected with Silas. These are new. Darius went out, found them, and placed them here—one by one.
I stand in the middle of my cabin.
My cabin.
“Thank you, Darius,” I say.
There’s a lump in my throat that won’t go away, no matter how many times I swallow.
He nods. “Maren replaced all the bedding, and there are some basic supplies in the cupboards.” He puts his hands in his pockets and shrugs, “I’ll leave you to it, then. Give you some privacy to settle in. It’s yours.”
His footsteps move off the porch and onto the soft ground. The others leave with him, heading back up to the main house.
I pick up one of the rocks Darius chose for me. It’s smooth and grey, with a vein of white running through it. I turn it over in my hands, the way I’ve turned over a thousand rocks in the last three years. But I didn’t find this one. I didn’t carry it home in my pocket. Darius did. He went into the woods, looked at rocks, and chose one he thought I would like. He picked them up and carried them here for me, lining them up on this windowsill, one by one.
Darius doesn’t know about the names I give my rocks. He doesn’t know about the meeting circles or the arguments between Charly and Rocky or any of the embarrassing, lonely, stupid things I’ve done because I had no one else. But he knows I love them.
Ordinary, worthless rocks that nobody else would ever think to collect. Darius noticed and went out of his way to bring me something that he thought would make me smile. Maybe he isn’t the complete knucklehead I thought he was.
I sit on the edge of the bed. The mattress is firm, and the blankets are soft and layered thick—the kind you could burrow into and disappear. I pick up one of the pillows and hold it against my chest, and look out the window at the lake. His thoughtfulness has thrown me for a loop, and a small ember within me, that I’d thought was cold and dark, sparks to life.
Darius sees me, and he’s meeting me where I am.
35
Mo
It’s been three days since I moved into the lake cabin, and honestly? I might never leave.
Three whole days of making the place mine, one small detail at a time. I line the porch walkway with some of the larger rocks I’ve collected from around the property, because obviously. I hang the winter jacket Lily gave me in the little closet in the corner of the room. The fridge came stocked with Diet Coke, and the bathroom smells faintly of that peach soap I used on my first day here. I’m surprised at all the little things Darius took note of, making sure I was comfortable. Every corner is a little more perfect than the last.
I love it here.
I’m sorting and putting away my small collection of clothes when I notice something. My hands pause on the soft fabric of a shirt that isn’t mine. It’s Silas’s, the one I took from the laundry basket yesterday when no one was looking. And it’s not theonly one. Archer’s grey t-shirt is tucked under my pillow. Elias’s hoodie, swiped from the back of a chair after breakfast. And Darius’s jacket, the one I said I needed because I was cold last night, is folded neatly on my nightstand.
I wasn’t cold.
“Holy shit. I’m nesting.”
Like a proper omega, next thing you know, I’ll be baking cookies and knitting baby booties. I stare at the shirt in my hands, waiting for the panic to hit. Waiting for the cold dread to take over. But it doesn’t come.
Instead, I lift Silas’s shirt to my face and breathe in, and my wolf practically purrs.
“This is so messed up,” I tell Charly and Rocky, who are now prominently displayed on the windowsill among Darius’s rock collection. “I’m literally stealing their clothes to sniff them.”
But I don’t put the shirt back. I arrange it carefully over one side of my pillow. Archer’s shirt gets the other side. Elias’s hoodie goes on the chair by the window where the morning light hits it.
The guys stop by throughout the day, arms loaded with food or whatever else I might need. Darius hasn’t shown up at the door, not once, but every morning, a neat stack of fresh wood waits by my steps, dry and split.